Awaken
by yuyuyashasrain
Summary: Anastasia Tremain has spent most of her life tormenting Cinderella, following her mother's example, like a good girl should. How much longer can this go on? I suck at summaries, but trust me, it's good for an English assignment.


I seem to see all of her success, all of her natural grace and daintiness, all of the reasons why she should go on living, through dying eyes.

Here I sit, old and alone, though I'm barely a woman now. All I've ever known is hatred, all I've ever tried is understanding why, and still I don't know how.

Asleep at night, I toss and turn. I dream of acts of violence, of hell. I'm attacked in my sleep, I'm haunted in my dreams, I'm alone in the world. When dawn awakens me and pushes my feelings aside, I bear the scars of my dreams. (If they are indeed the wishes my heart makes, then I'm one sadistic little harlot.) My envy cuts me open, tears my heart out, and poisons it before returning it to me, hands outstretched. And through it all, I'm alive. I'm awake.

I know how unbecoming of me it is to hate her, but I can't seem to help it.

I suppose I should start at the beginning.

My name is Anastasia Tremain, and I am a terrible person.

My father was rather like a phantom throughout my childhood. I relied mainly on the groundskeeper for a father figure, but he had no time to waste on my diminishing self-esteem. I welcomed Mother's gifts and constant attempts to improve me, haughty and conceited on the outside, never letting myself acknowledge how hated I was on the inside. My older sister, Drizzella, would always take things from me and order me around. I argued early on, but soon abandoned the effort entirely. What was the point? I never won.

Then along came Cinderella and her wealthy, loving father. A hatred the likes of which I'd never known burned within me when I saw her with him, so happy and appreciated. Father hated me too much to care, and Mother was ashamed to know me. I couldn't help it that I had no talents like the lovely Cinderella. It burned me that I could never measure up to such perfection, and in my covetous rage I neglected to realize that Cinderella lacked just as much in the absence of her mother as I did in the absence of my father. In a sense, we were kindred spirits, but I was blinded by rage, and I enjoyed hating her. I'd spent my entire life thus far being the weak younger sister. Now I had somebody to take it out on.

It wasn't until her father's death that Cinderella was rendered completely defenseless against my revenge. I took haste in joining my mother and sister in unleashing a vicious assault on her personal freedom. For the first few years, I genuinely enjoyed making her life miserable, making her regret the day she was born; but that changed the night we stopped her from going to the ball. Until then, she didn't even seem real to me. She met all of our ridiculous demands, endured all of our verbal attacks, and never once did she bend or break. She almost seemed inhuman. But when Drizzella and I destroyed her lovely gown, I saw the look in her eyes and we connected. True, it was only for a moment, but a moment was all I needed to realize she had feelings, had hopes and dreams, had a broken heart, just like I was supposed to. I was stricken by the force of understanding a truth so golden, but I dared not show my revelation; rather, I ignored it, like I did most things of this nature, and departed for the ball.

I spent the next hour denying that I'd had any sort of connection to Cinderella, the girl I wanted so desperately to become. It was strange to me, having been spoiled rotten all my life, to find myself envying a rich-girl-turned-servant, but she seemed so much happier than I. The best way for me to explain it was that I was jealous, not only of her Aryan beauty and natural perfection, but of her ability to appreciate life as well. Looking back on how much I'd been given, how much I'd never had to wait or work for, I realized I'd never have that satisfaction.

Having come to this unlikely conclusion, I was only more let down when I saw the prince dancing with that girl. I saw the look in his eyes, in her eyes, as they slowly revolved and swayed in perfect harmony, and suddenly I knew. Only one person could make me feel that kind of loathing in conjunction with that kind of awe. I knew that when I willed that girl to burst into flames, I was willing Cinderella to live up to her name.

Distraught, I fled the ballroom, still considering her happiness a fat worse than death, but unsure of what to do with this new information, as of yet. As a result, I kept her secret and wandered outside to mull things over.

Contrary to popular belief, I was very mature for my age, and so knew that it would be pointless to try and come to terms with this now. It was strange for me to be thinking of her as another girl, another human, and not just the object of my utter resentment. I knew I no longer hated her; I understood and accepted that fact; but I still had to keep up the charade in order to please my mother and sister. I know it sounds crazy, but I still needed them on my side, even after all they put me through.

I decided to forget the whole issue when Cinderella and the prince came strolling down the part near my hiding place in the bushes. My clumsiness caused me to rustle a few leaves on my way back to the palace, but luckily, they were singing about love and miracles too loudly to hear me.

On my way back to the ballroom, I played the part of a content rich girl -- the one thing I was good at -- and greeted my mother and sister in the usual manner.

"Anastasia, darling, there you are," Mother said as I approached. "Come, girls, we must be off."

"But what about the prince?" Drizzella asked, dumbfounded as usual. She'd never been the sharpest knife in the drawer, but nor was she to blame: Our careless father never looked after her while he was around, so she'd sustained her share of head injuries.

"No time to tarry, dear, we really must go," Mother insisted, and muttered to herself, "How many Aryans can there be in this kingdom?"

Uh-oh.

I boarded the carriage wordlessly and sat at Mother's left side, Drizzella at her right, complaining as always. I remianed silent on the way back to the manor, reason being that I didn't want to cause harm anymore than I wanted to help.

Around a quarter after midnight, we arrived, and not a moment later, Mother called for Cinderella, demanded that she do our laundry, and began a rant about the prince and his dance partner. I continued piling clothes on Cinderella, but I watched her out of the corner of my eye. For reasons unknown to me, I was anxious to see how she'd react.

I guess I wanted her to act normal, so I could believe she was accustomed to the occasional extravagant outing and able to lie about it quite easily. That way, I could continue hating her and simultaneously be able to justify it. I had no such luck, however; she was completely awestruck. It occurred to me, for all of half a second, that she knew I suspected her and only acted surprised to throw me off; then I decided that not only was this irrational, but it would also be a monumentally stupid move on her part. The cost of Mother and Drizzella finding her out would far outweigh the benefit of fooling only me.

_Well, she _is _monumentally stupid,_ a voice in the back of my head shrieked, purely out of habit, but I disregarded this as well. Cinderella wasn't _that_ stupid.

What truly shocked me was what she did after she got done being surprised. She dropped the laundry in my arms and waltzed out of the room, muttering to herself and dancing with an invisible man. I was shocked to encounter another of Cinderella's emotions I hadn't noticed before: Love.

"Mother, did you see what she just did?" Drizzella demanded, bringing me back to reality. I rejected my musings and fell back on rage once more.

Mother raised her hand for silence and swept away, leaving us to tarnish Cinderella's name amongst ourselves.

For the next few hours, I slept relatively peacefully in my bed. Around three, I think it was, I woke up without opening my eyes and thought of what I should say to Cinderella in the morning. I genuinely wanted to reform (or perhaps I wanted to be as happy as she), but I wasn't sure how. I saw no reason why she should forgive me for all the years of torment, making the effort seem fruitless. I probably should've given up hope just to make things easier, but I refused to take the easy way out, for once in my life. I decided I'd figure out what to say tomorrow and went back to sleep.

When Mother came in and woke me, I found myself wishing my entire breakthrough had been a dream so I wouldn't have to think about it. When she brought up the ball, my horrible sinking feeling let me know it wasn't. I swayed drowsily in my bed next to Drizzella as Mother explained that the girl the prince fell in love with left behind a glass slipper at the ball, and whoever could wear that slipper would become the new queen.

This caught my attention. I had to ask myself what was more important: Fulfilling a lifelong dream of having all the power I could ever want, or filling the lifelong void that resulted from having never lifted a finger to get where I was in life? I bore this thought in mind the entire time I was fixing my hair, slipping into a flattering pink gown, and doing anything I could with makeup to hide the ugly girl I saw inside. Stranger yet than realizing I'd freed myself from hating Cinderella was the fact that I knew she was right. It should've bothered me more.

Then I looked to my left and saw my sister decorating her own face with sizable amounts of paint and powder, adorning herself with every valuable trinket she laid eyes on, and fussing over her hair, which was now blatantly refusing to do as it was told. My sister... I was so embarrassed to think what she would say if she knew, that, were it any other color, my hair would've been in danger of turning red.

All too soon, there was a very regal knock at the door, and I rushed downstairs after my sister, forgetting, in my natural power madness, the dilemma I'd just been facing. I was forcefully reminded when Cinderella was noticeable only by her absence. I would've inquired as to her whereabouts, but I was not fond of having my head blown off this early in the morning.

Following a brief explanation of the current situation, similar to the one Mother gave just an hour ago, I volunteered the false information that it was my slipper. I put on a very convincing act, if I do say so myself, though any shot I had at success, in retrospect I think I blew it. Curse these very large feet of mine...

It was such a turning point, and I wasn't ready to face it. I was so torn between changing for the better and keeping life simple, I reverted to my old self purely out of habit. It was an instinct of fear alone, but it made me look like more than a coward.

"She's confused," Drizzella said smoothly. "What she meant to say was, those slippers are mine and she borrowed them. Look..."

Drizzella made a tremendous effort to fit her foot into the slipper, and for a while we thought she had it, but for the fact that she couldn't quite get her heel in. The King's advisor took it back, afraid she may break it.

"Are you quite finished, Mademoiselle?" he asked rhetorically, adjusting his monocle. "We must be off. Come, Geoffrey."

I had every opportunity to speak up, but I couldn't force my vocal cords to vibrate. Just as he opened the door, I was preparing to call out to him, but all of a sudden --

"Wait!"

The two men stopped at the threshold and we all turned to see Cinderella, holding up her skirt ever so properly as she all but floated down the stairs. At that moment I remembered why I hated her so much.

"Please, let me try it on," she said in that lyrical tone of hers.

"Pay her no mind," Mother said as pleasantly as possible; "she's not worth your time."

"Now, Madame, I insist you move aside!" the advisor said crossly. "She is an eligible young maiden, and this is the law! Sit down, dear," he added to Cinderella, much more calmly, and motioned at a chair with a bow. "Geoffrey?"

The small man came forward importantly, bearing the slipper on a luxurious, slightly ostentatious little violet pillow, and was about to present it to Cinderella when Mother stuck her cane out for him to trip over.

It seemed to happen in slow motion, yet it was all moving much too fast: Geoffrey fell to his elbows and knees, his bottom landing squarely on his heels, his visage changing from anticipation to abhorrence in a split second. The slipper went up, up in the air, through the bend of a candlestick on the chandelier, and shattered as the floor rushed up to greet it, small and large fragments ricocheting ever so slightly, slight as the one person worthy of wearing it. The slipper, once so easily seen through, now littered the floor in sharps too sharp to handle, bearing so much pain, readily guarded from human contact, yet somehow much more beautiful than it had been whole. Cinderella didn't need that slipper to prove who she was. _Geoffrey,_ I thought, _Geoffrey, if you only knew..._

"Oh, but that's a shame," Mother said convincingly, shaking her head somberly. "Dear, dear, how unfortunate. Accidents do happen, I suppose."

"The King," the advisor murmured, falling to his knees and trembling horribly as his fingers curled in oncoming madness. "He'll have my head for this!"

"No, he won't," Cinderella said calmly, matter-of-factly, and I almost marveled at her borderline obnoxious optimism, when she revealed the contents of her pocket. "You see, I have the other slipper."

I may not have been the only one not surprised by what happened next -- in fact, I think we were all expecting it -- but I was probably the only grateful one. True, I still wanted the prince and the throne for myself, but not as much as I wanted to take the first step toward a straight and narrow path. I couldn't believe how long it took me to realize this, how many years I had wasted and would never see again, each one squandered on hating CInderella and thinking up new and interesting ways to make her suffer. But for once, it was all okay. I didn't feel like yelling at myself this time. I told myself instead, _It's okay,_ and let the warmth of Cinderella's prospective forgiveness wash over me. I couldn't believe how much freedom I'd been given, just by letting go.

"Ooh, I don't_ believe_ this!" Drizzella raged, and once again I tagged along in her juvenile game, permitting the act wholeheartedly now that I knew where I stood.

_One of these days, Drizzella,_ I vowed. _One of these days, you'll know who I really am._


End file.
